Stuart Aken's Blog, page 245

Writing? What Constitutes Work for You?

Time and again, we hear wails from writers complaining that writing is such hard work. They moan about how difficult it all is, so that one is forced to wonder why they do it. Coal mining is hard work, labouring is hard work, working a 70 hour shift as a junior doctor in a hospital is hard work. Writing isn’t, or shouldn’t be, hard work.

No one is forced to write: it’s a personal choice, a selection of a lifestyle. Anyone who becomes a writer in the expectation of making easy money is a fool. Writing fiction is not a way to guarantee a worthwhile income. The average English novel makes around £2000.00 for the writer: that’s for an investment of maybe two years work (and, included in that average is the income made by authors such as JK Rowling. Do the math, as they say). Anyone entering the field without awareness of the realities is either naive or stupid. Few freelancers, writing articles, make a very good living, though some make a reasonable amount. Probably the only way to be sure of a constant income from writing is to become a journalist working on a regularly published journal. Everything else is speculation.
For me, writing is not work. It’s a joy, a journey through my imagination to lands and lives I invent. This isn’t work, this is delight. Editing isn’t work; not for me. I love the chase for the perfect word or phrase. I love the discovery of new vocabulary to replace repetitions, I love the search for new ways to say things. Research isn’t work: it’s an adventure, a trip to new experiences and knowledge.
So, what is work for me, when it comes to the world of writing fiction? Selling. Marketing. Building a platform. I’ve worked as a salesman more than once during my varied career and it was never a role that sat easily with me. We look at life through our own eyes, and tend to expect that people are pretty much like us. I’m that guy who never wants to be advised on what to buy, who doesn’t want to be approached by a shop assistant handing out advice. If I want something, I do some research and buy what appears to be best for my needs. I expect others to be similar, so the idea of actively selling seems either a waste of time or a con trick. Surely people know what they want and where they can obtain it? Marketing is similar, in that it’s a means to persuade people to be interested in something they may otherwise not consider.
I hear the screams of protest. I hear the denials. Yes, I know that the world of books is a tough one with competition that’s often far from fair. I understand that, if I want to sell my books, I have to somehow get them to the attention of readers. In so doing, I have to compete and become involved in league tables, press releases, advertising, promotion, engagement with potential readers, and a slough of other activities all designed to take me away from what I think I do best; writing.
So, I have a choice. I can spend most of my time and effort engaged in activity designed to bring my work to the attention of others; something I’ve been doing with minimal success for the past year or more. Or I can write, publish books, and hope that readers will appreciate those works, spread the word and allow me to build a readership that enables my books to be read by more and more people. My choice should depend on what I do best and what I most love. Writing. So, that is what, from now, I will be doing. If I sell few books as a result of taking this approach, so be it: it’ll be no change from the current situation. Except that I’ll be actively enjoying my time writing instead of finding the task of marketing and selling a drudgery I can barely abide.
I’ve spent the last three days in doing the final editing of book one of a fantasy trilogy. Much of that time has been a re-reading of the book, following the editing, so that I have it fresh in my mind. I’ll spend the next few days in doing the same for book two, already written and edited. Then I can start to write book three, which has been slowly bubbling away in the back of my mind during the last few months. This is what I love to do. Write.
This means I won’t always be free to do these spots, which were once regular. I’ll certainly try to produce a post each week, simply because this is a form of writing I enjoy and find relatively easy to do. It’s also a necessary break from the more imaginative creative writing involved in making up a story. But it isn’t work. Not for me. It’s pleasure, enjoyment, fulfilment.
So. When it comes to the world of writing, what constitutes work for you and why do you do it? Let us all know. Just place a comment here and share your thoughts. You might help some other poor beleaguered writer along the way.
 Here are a few quotes on work from well know writers:
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Oscar Wilde.Work is a necessary evil to be avoided. Mark Twain.Nothing is work unless you’d rather be doing something else. George Halas.Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Mark Twain.Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. Stephen King.I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. Vincent Van Gogh.Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time. Pablo Picasso.The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. Richard Bach.If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work. Khalil Gibran.

I think you’ll spot those with which I agree. More than anything else, I hope you’ll find ways to enjoy this wonderful craft we call writing.Related articles J. K. Rowling's Top 10: Good Tips for Writing a Book Why I Love Writing But Still Hate English Class (Part 2) Mark Twain on Writing a Novel. Best Seller or Mockery? How Sharon Short Became a Writer

ProWritingAid, a Review.

When a member of my writers group suggests a writing tool might be useful, I sit up and take notice. When April Taylor sent the group an email about ProWritingAid, I decided to explore. We’re an odd bunch, but all professional published writers with varied experience and we tend to filter out the dross for each other.
ProWritingAid is a text editing suite. A trial version allows a writer to paste text into the program and obtain an analysis. It’s a useful introduction to the application, but doesn’t give a comprehensive understanding of the wide variety of tools on offer.
I rarely write articles, other than the posts I place here or as a guest on other blogs, so some of the features are of less use to me. Fiction doesn’t require the rigid guidelines that often apply to reports and corporate writing. However, if you write such matter, you’ll find you can set house rules and the analysis will show where these have been broken.
For my fiction, I’ve used a number of methods for editing my text to produce a level of competence that I can present to readers with confidence. I still use that multi-layered system but I now employ ProWritingAid as the penultimate tool. My wife, hawk-eyed, reliable and honest, makes the final check. Since I’ve employed this editing tool, she’s found very little, and that’s been mostly opinion rather than grammatical or syntactical queries.
So, how does the tool work? You paste a copy of your text into the box on screen, press ‘Analyse’ and wait a few moments for the program to scrutinise it. This can take three or four minutes for a piece 5000 words long, depending on the complexity of the language (for this post, it took 17 seconds). Once complete, the result is a series of reports, which detail the findings and suggest changes where necessary. One aspect I enjoy is the praise for being right. Along with the errors, the notes show where the writer has avoided them and gives a brief note of approval.
The following list of reports shows the depth of analysis:Summary – just that; a listing of all errors found.Overused words – frequency of commonly overused words.Sentence variation – gives a visual representation of sentence lengths and highlights long sentences.Grammar – a check on grammatical accuracy.Writing style – checks for passive and hidden verbs.Sticky sentences – finds those sentences that contain any of the 200 most used words: these sentences can slow the reader down.Clichés & redundancies – highlights clichés and expressions that say the same thing twice.Repeated words & phrases – highlights repetition of words and 2, 3 and 4 word phrases within short stretches of writing to give an opportunity to introduce variety.Corporate wording – shows ‘jargon’ usage, which you may or may not wish to avoid.NLP Predicates – I had to look this up – Neurolinguistic Programming relates to how we express ourselves and use language to express feeling, amongst other things. For more info, try this website: http://www.renewal.ca/index.html  Pronouns – highlights repeated use of pronouns to start sentences.Diction – shows possible diction problems and suggests alternatives.Vague & abstract words – shows those words that lack strength or that might lack specificity.Complex words – indicates word length by number of syllables – suggests simplification where appropriate.Alliteration analysis – shows phrases where alliteration may have crept in inadvertently.Pacing – identifies places where the pace is slowed by introspection, backstory, etc.Consistency – points out inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation.Sentiment – shows where sentiment might vary suddenly from positive to negative, etc.House style – allows the user to develop a house style and ensure it remains consistent through the piece.Time – allows the user to check for consistency in the usage of time references.Dialogue – finds those rogue dialogue tags that you might want to avoid.Homonyms – checks for those words that sound alike and therefore may have slipped through your spell check.
I’ve avoided giving examples in the list above, as it would have made the post too long. I hope most serious writers will be sufficiently aware of the content to understand the context. I’d advise those who aren’t to invest in a couple of good grammar books, as an understanding of language is an essential prerequisite for a professional writer. In the same way that you’d be unlikely to employ a plumber who lacks a knowledge of his trade, you shouldn’t expect a reader to struggle through work that displays no understanding of the tools of the trade: words.
Using this program as my penultimate editing tool has helped me enormously. I can’t honestly say it’s speeded up the process, because it hasn’t! But it’s made it much more thorough and I feel far more confident about sending my words out there into the reading world.
There are a few niggles, which you need to know. If you use a PC with MS Word, you can download an application that will allow you to make changes within Word. But if you use a Mac, like me, you can’t yet do that (they are, apparently, working on a fix.) I haven’t found a way of preserving the formatting of my text. I paste it in the form of a normal fiction template, which has no line spacing between paragraphs and uses indents. But the copied text, when corrected, is returned as line-spaced paragraphs without indents, and the font is changed. This is easily corrected, of course, but it would be helpful if such changes didn’t occur!
Having discovered that I can email the reports to myself as a .pdf document, I now use this and place the MS document on the left of the screen and the .pdf reports on the right and make the changes that way. Works a treat, if a little laboriously. 
There is also a visual aid, producing a word cloud, as in the illustration, that gives a graphic impression of the weight of the words you’ve used. Useful in the way that it really draws attention to word usages you might otherwise overlook.

Do I recommend the software? Absolutely. It’s relatively inexpensive at £22.70 ($35.00) per year and it certainly does all I need. If you decide to try it, here’s the link: http://prowritingaid.com/Related articles Coherent Writing: Diction Seven Tips for Writing Concisely The Dangers of Writing In Passive When an Active Voice Is Demanded. A week of resources and inspiration for the Writer - Day 2

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, by Dwight Spivey, Reviewed.

Not a general book, of course, but a one for those interested in and learning to use the software with the hardware and operating system.
I thought I knew Word, in particular, very well, but there were many lessons for me here. I’ve learnt things that will hopefully increase my productivity and allow me more freedom to express myself more fully. The ability to work with programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint more effectively will certainly improve my speed of work. But, as familiarity increases, I also expect that my confidence in use will allow me to take advantage of many of the aspects of the programs of which I was previously ignorant or uncertain. It solved a problem or me involving Excel and charts; for that alone, it saved me much time that would otherwise have been wasted.
Laid out in a logical manner, which aids both learning and actual use, it’s a ‘Dummies’ guide in all but name. Of course, there are many aspects that are merely alluded to and many others that aren’t covered at all, but that’s to be expected with a subject so complex and multi-layered.
Illustrated copiously with screen shots, the text gives excellent examples of the solutions to many of the problems we deal with daily in our computer lives. The tone is friendly and light, but the content is serious and fairly comprehensive. I’m by no means a techie, but I found it easy to follow. I’m very new to the Mac, and previously used Office 2010, so I had more than one set of changes to deal with. The book led me easily through the maze of technical jargon, helping me understand much that had previously been a mystery to me.
Organised into chapters dealing with various aspects of each program, I found the whole course easy to follow. I ignored the section on Outlook as I’ve tried this program in three of its previous manifestations and always suffered major problems with it. There are other programs available that do everything outlook does, and are easier to deal with, so I’ll stick to those. My knowledge of PowerPoint is very small, but as an author, I can think of ways in which it could be very useful, especially for marketing, so I was glad of the help on that.

If, like me, you’ve recently purchased either a Mac and/or the newer Office software, and you’re having difficulty using either or both, then this is the book for you. Of its type, it’s one of the better examples and I recommend it.Related articles Office 2011 update includes more Office 365 features How do you transfer a powerpoint on microsoft to a mac presentation? Microsoft's Office 2011 For Mac Gets New Update, Office 365 Compatibility Microsoft will give away Office on smaller Windows 8 tablets

Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym, Reviewed.

I read the Folio Society edition of this novel, illustrated rather charmingly and with considerable insight, by Debra McFarlane. There’s something essentially apt about reading a book from the early 50s in the form of a hardback with appropriate plates. Set in the period just following World War II, and written in the first person by one of the ‘excellent women’ of the title, it should really be entirely of its time. The simple brilliance of the writing, the wonderful characterisation and the gently comic surface of a story bursting with subterranean passion, angst, desperation and injustice elevates the novel to the status of a minor classic.
There’s no violence, no sex, no foul language; yet all of humanity is here amongst the weary, caring, superficial, flirting, thoughtless, considerate, courageous, resigned and loving people that inhabit the pages. Church, though neither spirituality nor real faith, plays a significant part in the lives of the protagonists who attend the edifice but appear devoid of any passion for their religion, frequently gently mocking their membership of the club.
Miss Mildred Lathbury, who describes herself in the fourth paragraph of the first chapter as an unmarried clergyman’s daughter just over thirty and living alone without apparent ties, is far from the dull spinster we might expect. The gentle humour that suffuses the whole book often hides a deep pathos as the excellent women of the title go about their daily lives without hope of fulfilment in marriage, career or society in general. Being busy, showing and dealing with concern for their fellow human beings, whilst living grey, unnoticed lives, these are the women who make life easier, sometimes even possible, for those surrounding them.
The unexpressed intelligence, the unacknowledged charity, the unspoken desire, the unrecognised hopes and dreams of these single women is so exquisitely drawn that the reader feels every nuance of the subtle insults that surround them. Taken for granted, patronised, ignored, relied upon and rejected without thought, these women take on all those tasks that others find either boring or irrelevant until the jobs are neglected; only then are the quiet duties seen for the social glue they truly are, but not for very long, of course.
The society in which this novel takes place has largely disappeared, but the people and the circumstances remain. I laughed out loud many times whilst reading the book but always, under the surface, was a recognition that the humour sprang from deep inequalities of both gender and income. I was reminded of the best of British sitcoms where humour is mingled with pathos, each quality emphasising the other in a balance that works so well to entertain whilst putting across a message.

This is a story in which nothing of any significance to anyone outside the narrow confines of the small neighbourhood takes place. There are no earth-shattering events, no crime, nothing crude, nothing erotic. But it depicts lives lived in quiet, courageous desperation and does so with a deep affection for those described. I enjoyed it, and I suspect Mildred will live with me for a long time. Those who enjoy action and adventure will find this hard to read, but I thoroughly recommend it to all those who love romance in its best form, those who enjoy books with real characters, and those who find enjoyment in gentle humour.Related articles Review: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym A Few Good Tidbits from Barbara Pym Marvelous Spinster Barbara Pym At 100 Barbara Pym

May Was a Maybe Month.

It was supposed to be the start, the beginning of the full time writing life. But life has a way of getting in the way of ambition, doesn’t it? Retirement exposes all those domestic tasks that you intended to complete one day. And I’ve been doing some of those. Coupled with the freedom to do what I want when I like, comes some good weather at long last and I felt unequal to allowing the gardens to become even more like jungles for lack of opportunity to care for them. Hedges, bushes and lawns all trimmed and no longer capable of secreting tigers or bears. One of the things I’d decided some time ago was to replace the car when I retired. So, I’ve prepared the old one for my daughter as her first vehicle; she learned to drive in it, so it seems sensible to let her see it through its final few years until she has a job and can afford to replace it. I tend to do a fair bit of research before I go out spending any reasonable quantity of money and, let’s face it, a car is hardly a small purchase, even if it is a used model. So I’ve spent quite a few hours online discovering the most reliable, economic and efficient models before making a selection. I pick up the replacement car on Tuesday.
All the foregoing is, of course, by way of an excuse for not having done much in the way of writing.  I’ve managed to write and post 7 pieces on here. Read and reviewed 3 books, and reviewed on TripAdvisor the hotel, restaurants and holiday cottage we visited whilst away for the week of my birthday.  Posted an album of edited photos of the holiday on Facebook as well. Four times I’ve researched and updated the Writing Contests page. I’ve prepared and published Heir to Death’s Folly on Smashwords, so it’s now available for any ebook format you care to select for it. It’s a good horror read, by the way. It was previously only available on Amazon’s Kindleplatform, as an experiment to see whether or not concentration on that outlet would make any difference to sales. It didn’t.
Setting up and getting used to the iMac took some time, of course; in fact, I’m still learning as I go along. And I had to suspend the touch-typing lessons, as the software I had wasn’t suitable for the Mac. (I’ve subsequently sold that, and much of the old PC stuff, on eBay – another time-consuming process). I’ve managed to return to the touch-typing just this week and caught up with where I was when I abandoned it, so that’s a positive. Oh, and I did manage to edit a short story in time to submit it for a contest, so not a complete failure.
The chart of time spent, as you’ll notice, is no longer in the form of a pie – too tempting when you’re trying to lose weight. No, actually, I thought the bar chart gave a better idea of the real differences, except I notice that I've managed to include a label in the graphic. Sorry, no time to undo that now. Also, adding up the percentages seems to make the sum rather greater than 100%! Clearly, I'll have to examine the new Excel in Office 2011 that I bought for the Mac and see where I'm going wrong! Oh good, more distractions!
The chart, explained: 'Writing' - initial creation of stories, blog posts, reviews and longer works.'Editing' - polishing of all written work to make it suitable for readers.'Research' - discovery of info for story content, market research, contests and blog posts.'Reading' - books and writing magazines.'Networking' - emails, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+activity.
'Admin' - story submission, blog posting, marketing, organisation, learning to touch-type, and general admin tasks.Related articles Why is Success in Writing so Elusive? Survivorship bias: why 90% of the advice about writing is bullshit right now

25 Random Facts About me that You May Not Know.

I was recently invited to take part in a ‘chain’ event on Facebook. It looked harmless enough, except to the paranoid types. Basically, the idea was to list 25 random facts about yourself; things that people wouldn’t necessarily know. A bit of fun, provided the subjects don’t provide info of use to those intent on identity fraud, of course.Trouble was, in order to partake, it was necessary to take a particular route through the FB labyrinth. And it turned out that, for reasons known only to FB, my route wasn’t so much blocked as lacking a starting point. So, unwilling to be defeated, and being pressed for some participation, I thought I’d do it here instead and provide a link to the post on FB.
So, here goes.
25 Things you probably don’t know about me (and, just as likely, didn’t want to!):
1.     I was once told off by the Queen Mother, via her Aide de Camp, a General.2.     I didn’t learn to swim until I was 16 and in the RAF.3.     Jake Thackray, the folk singer, once bought me a beer in The Red Lion, Colchester.4.     I had to be escorted from a factory via the back way after delivering unwanted news to a large bunch of 5.     On a school trip, I had to run back 3 miles to retrieve a piece of photographic equipment I’d left on rock on the North York Moors.6.     My real father died 3 weeks before I was born.7.     I was chased off the racetrack at Brands Hatch by stewards when they discovered I had no press pass.8.     My first published photograph was a front cover on the professional British Journal of Photography.9.     I had to be stomach pumped at the age of 17 after a particularly heavy pre-Xmas drinking bout with my brother, Barry.10.  I fell into the boating lake at East Park in Hull when I was 5, watching a water ride.11.  I spent some of my childhood living in a converted railway wagon, still on its wheels, on the cliff top near Hornsea.12.  I photographed my first wedding during a blizzard at a church in Leconfield when I was 19.13.  Tom Stoppard described my radio play as picaresque during an interview at the BBC and I had no idea what he meant.14.  Striking dockers threatened to chuck me in the River Crouch at Colchester after a slight misunderstanding.15.  A colleague and I were chased through the streets of Armagh in Northern Ireland after we took photographs at an ‘anti internment’ meeting.16.  Riding round the wall of the boating lake in Pearson Park in Hull, I fell into the water and had to be dried by the fire in the first aid hut.17.  Asked to take a bird into school to mount its skeleton for a biology lesson, I was refused my request to take a dead swan I’d found on the banks of the River Humber.18.  Morecombe and Wise posed for photographs for me on 4 occasions.19.  I caused our French teacher to burst into tears and upset the boys in the class as she was very pretty and we were then taught by a stern German man instead.20.  I enjoy listening to Shirley Bassey.21.  Rod Stewart once bowed and raised his multi-coloured top hat at me backstage at a pop festival and I failed to take a photograph of him as I didn’t know who he was!22.  I read every book in the camp library at RAF Lyneham.23.  I was once given a lift by 3 nuns.24.  I once stole a keyring with a tiny penknife attached but felt so bad I had to go back and replace it. I was about 12.25.  The Railway Children, with Jenny Agutter as Bobbie, always makes me cry when she meets her father at the station.
So, there you have it. A few things to reinforce your opinion that I’m…well, whatever you thought I was before you read this lot.

I hope I’ve entertained you with this absolutely factual list. Please feel free to comment.

Disclosure, by Michael Crichton, Reviewed

First published in 1994, Disclosure by Michael Crichton, is one of those novels based on actual events, though this is not made clear until the end of the book, in an ‘afterword’. Whether that information would have made any difference to my reading is an unknown. It reads like fiction, so I read it in that spirit.
The stated theme is that of sexual harassment and its potentially corrosive effects on both corporations and society in general. Written at a time when such complaints were increasingly being made by men against female employers, it examines the subject in detail, without ever making it into a treatise. The facts and ideas emerge naturally as part of the plot, as guided by the characters. So, it’s a cleverly constructed work. There was, for me, another underlying theme, though I’m not certain the author presented it consciously: I hope he did. That other idea concerns the corrupt foundation that underpins many commercial ideas and actions. The presentation of many characters as ruthless, uncaringly ambitious and utterly devoid of any moral compass creates an atmosphere in which even a flawed hero can appear almost saintly by comparison.
There were times, early in the book, when I was unsure whether I would read to the end. For reasons that have nothing to do with the story, I had to read it in a number of small bites. Only the last third of the 450 pages was I able read in anything like uninterrupted form, which was just as well, since the denouement starts early and builds very well over these last pages. But the reason for my initial hesitation was twofold. There’s a deal of inconsequential detail; the sort of thing that apprentice writers are warned against: what someone had for breakfast, the processes of domestic living, etc. The second barrier was the amount of technical information given in the form of either business or product-specific jargon, often without sufficient explanation. Having been involved in both business and computers during my lengthy employment, I was able to interpret enough of this to make it at least comprehensible. But I suspect many could be thoroughly confused by it, and I doubt it was essential to the story; less technical descriptions could have been given instead.
However, I’m glad I persevered. The story grew more engaging as I learned more about the main characters and came to care what happened to them; both good and bad. It’s an absolutely essential aspect of the story for me: without at least one character I can empathise with, I’m unlikely to finish a novel. Fortunately, due to good writing, there were many well-written and engaging characters in this tale.
Lauded as ‘The thriller that opened a new chapter on the sex wars’, this is a book that allows the modern reader to more thoroughly understand the mechanisms, philosophies, emotions and ambitions that drive some of the sexual harassment cases that continue to be made by both genders.

Is it a good read? The curate’s egg comes to mind, but, once over the unnecessary detail and jargon, I found the book illuminating, interesting and even engaging. So, for me, this turned out to be a good read in spite of its flaws. And I’d recommend it to those who have some knowledge of business and the world of computing. For others, it may be sensible to have a dictionary of business terms and another of computer jargon to guide them through the sometimes cryptic language.Related articles Prey by Michael Crichton How Michael Crichton Gave Birth to the Movie Pixel Good Crichton vs. Bad Crichton Was Michael Crichton right about a link between epilepsy and violence?

I Before E, Except After C?

English: So many words to keep track of!. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)If ever a writing rule was overstated, it must be this one. Once it becomes evident that there are more exceptions than examples following a rule, the rule becomes seriously unhelpful; redundant at best.
We all know about receipt, receive, ceiling, etc. But there are actually more words used in English that have the ‘ei’ construction than those using ‘ie’.
Don’t believe me? I offer a mere handful:Heir, weir, Eire, weird, being, deific, leisure, meiosis, neighbour, eisegesis, neither, peignoir, reiki, seismic, vein, weigh, zein, either, feign, height, rein, reiterate, seine, seize, teise, veil, zeitgeist, eight, deign, deity, eider, feint, heifer, heinous, Leicester, peise, reign, feisty, geisha. Have a think: I’m sure you’ll find hundreds more.
Okay, I accept that some of these are ‘foreign’ words, but English is a conglomerate language, made up of words and expressions stolen from invaders and the victims of Britain’s ancient and extensive empire. Modern English is said to contain over 1,000,000 different words, exceeding any other language.

So, to return to the rule: forget it. Your English teacher was wrong. Most schools in Britain have stopped preaching this erroneous rule now, so you can allow yourself to ditch it as well. Go on, you know you’d love to. It’s not helpful.      Related articles Grammar vs. style: ignorance in The Times Our crazy language History of English Language? Introduction

The iMac Has Landed

Núverandi 2007 Intel iMac. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For years I’ve wanted to use a Mac instead of a PC for my writing. I decided I would treat myself on my retirement from employment and, last Monday, I made the purchase.
As is invariably the case with technology, the process of getting up and running wasn’t straightforward. It never ceases to amaze me that the systems purported to make our lives easier, in fact, make them more difficult. The Mac is a wonderfully intuitive machine but, like all technological items, it has its shortcomings. One aspect that is singularly noticeable is that ‘intuitive’ is clearly a selective quality. The machine itself comes with no written instructions of any real use. And the DVD Drive, which is a superb piece of engineering and design, comes with even less.
One of the aspects I, as customer and user, like to experience is some level of confidence that what I’m doing and what the machines I’ve invested in are doing is actually what I intended. The information around this fairly basic need is poor or non-existent.
I discovered, almost by accident, a process intended to transfer my old files from the PC to the Mac. On the face of it, this looked fairly simple. After following the instructions and first suffering a failure of the software (on my PC) I wasted 8 hours, waiting for the transfer to complete. I gave up and went to bed. The next day, I stripped all the old programs from the PC and rationalised some of the files. Now, I’m a writer and a photographer, so I have a good deal of stuff on file. It worked out, after some re-organisation and some deletion, that I had 10,309 text files and 10,176 photo files. The size of the transferable batch of information was around 62 GB. I assumed the transfer from PC to Mac would take some time and set the program off again. It was still running some 7 hours later, with no indication of when or even if it would ever complete. I went to bed again.
The next day, I transferred music and photos manually, using a 4GB USB memory stick. It was time-consuming, but slowly the files built up on the Mac and I felt I was getting somewhere at last. Once transferred, I deleted the files from the old PC, leaving only the text files and personal information to be transferred by Apple’s ‘File Migration’ software. I gave it one last chance, but it still was searching for information after 5 hours and I gave it up as a bad job, transferred the text files manually and decided I’d simply have to re-set all the personal info stuff as I used the Mac.
I’m up and running again now. I do love the Mac and I enjoy the way it works. But I continue to wonder at the failure of an entire industry to make its products straightforward and user-friendly for its customers. Clearly, the designers of software and hardware have no concept of the level of knowledge held by the average user. So, I make a public plea, which I expect to be ignored, for those in the IT industry to always ask a panel of normal members of the public to test and evaluate all their products before releasing them. That way we might all be much happier and more able to get on with our lives.
Moan over. iMac in use. I might now be able to get some writing done, at last!

I had hoped to include a picture of myself at the iMac, but I haven't yet figured out how to do that!

Okay, So Where's the Usual Post?

Sorry folks. Today's my 65th birthday. In UK that makes me officially a pensioner, an old age pensioner (OAP), a label we use to identify the decrepit and discarded. I'll happily accept the concessions and small benefits that come with the label, but I'm not accepting the mindset that too often accompanies the coming of age.
But, it's a special day and I intend to spend it in a special way. So, see you all next week.
Cheers.